Shwayze - Shwayze
Artist: Shwayze Review: Cisco Adler, leader of Los Angeles sleaze rockers Whitestarr, is famous for his well-connected dad (producer Lou Adler), ex-girlfriends (like Mischa Barton) and his ballsy nude photo, which leaked online last year. His newest hobby is producing tracks (and an MTV reality show) for 22-year-old Malibu chill-hop rapper Shwayze, whose breezy flow is a hybrid of Young MC and Digable Planets' Butterfly. Adler's no beat master, and the tracks on Shwayze all sound like variations on thumb-strummed Jack... Rating: 2.5 Stars
Various Artists - Nobody Knows Anything - DFA presents Supersoul Recordings
Artist: Various Artists Review: Having built the most reliable brand in freakably fusion-minded dance music with artists like LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture, DFA Records has decided to globalize. The debut release on its international Death From Abroad imprint collects tracks from Supersoul, a two-year-old Berlin label whose bastardized beats flaunt the same formal disregard that makes DFA so great. Because the material is from a German operation, there are minimalist 4/4 techno rhythms (Mogg and Naudascher's "Moon Unit Pt.... Rating: 3 Stars
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
Artist: Elton John Review: Elton John was a lot of things — sideman, session man and flop, with a long tail of failed solo releases, including the 1969 LP Empty Sky — before 1970's Elton John made him an overnight star. He wasn't afraid to admit it. John packed a bonus scrapbook in the original lavish packaging of 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy with bad-hair photos, comic music-press ads ("You've been warned! Elton John is 1968's great new talent") and other ample proof of his time, with... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Death Vessel - Nothing is Precious Enough For Us
Artist: Death Vessel Review: No, Joel Thibodeau is not a girl. Though the Death Vessel mastermind, whose falsetto matches his pixielike stature and long hair, is probably used to people making that mistake. On Thibodeau's Sub Pop debut, his voice is as delicate as Juliana Hatfield's, threading wispy notes into haunting ballads that crib from the backwoods folk of acts like Iron and Wine. The result evokes a makeshift jam session in an Appalachian cabin: fingerpicked ditties like "Block My Eye" and "Jitterakadie" use railroa... Rating: 3.5 Stars
The Academy Is. . . - Fast Times At Barrington High
Artist: The Academy Is. . . Review: In every emo band's career, there comes a time for "growing up" — dealing with more serious subject matter and jettisoning pop punk for a broader sound. Fall Out Boy have gone that route, but their friends the Academy Is. . . are happy to stay young a little longer. On their third album, themed around the senior year of high school, frontman William Beckett captures the struggle of being 18: the feeling that these are "the best days of our lives," as he sings on "After the Last Midtown Sho... Rating: 3 Stars
Various Artists - Everything that Happens Will Happen Today
Artist: Various Artists Review: David Byrne and Brian Eno retreated to pop's periphery years ago, but their influence is suddenly front and center. There are echoes of Byrne's old band, Talking Heads, in the avant-funk of LCD Soundsystem and other dance-rock bands, and you can hear the singer's workaday hysteria in the cadences of Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock. Coldplay sought producer Eno to help them make Viva la Vida, a record that recalls another album with Eno's mark, U2's The Joshua Tree.... Rating: 4 Stars
The Verve - Forth
Artist: The Verve Review: Two of the best psychedelic rock shows I've ever seen were by this British band, in London and New York, in the summer of 1993, and most of the Verve's fourth record — their first after a decade apart — is a return to that whirlpool-guitar, shaman-song form. "Sit and Wonder" is what they meant by their 1993 album title A Storm in Heaven: the trancelike gallop of bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury; guitarist Nick McCabe's creamy distortion and ascending rings of tremolo... Rating: 4 Stars
ZZ Top - Eliminator
Artist: ZZ Top Review: Mention dance rock and people think of Franz Ferdinand or Duran Duran. But when it comes to the American edition, nothing matches the ferocity or success of ZZ Top's 1983 Eliminator, a landmark blend of traditional Texan boogie blues, New Wave synths and disco-steady beats that sold over 10 million U.S. units. Yielding the band's sleek pop breakthrough, "Legs," and a slew of similarly strutting rock-radio staples, Eliminator announced a major studio reinvention from a hairy Houston threesome... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection (Deluxe Edition)
Artist: Elton John Review: Elton John was a lot of things — sideman, session man and flop, with a long tail of failed solo releases, including the 1969 LP Empty Sky — before 1970's Elton John made him an overnight star. He wasn't afraid to admit it. John packed a bonus scrapbook in the original lavish packaging of 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy with bad-hair photos, comic music-press ads ("You've been warned! Elton John is 1968's great new talent") and other ample proof of his time, with... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Elton John - Elton John (Deluxe Edition)
Artist: Elton John Review: Elton John was a lot of things — sideman, session man and flop, with a long tail of failed solo releases, including the 1969 LP Empty Sky — before 1970's Elton John made him an overnight star. He wasn't afraid to admit it. John packed a bonus scrapbook in the original lavish packaging of 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy with bad-hair photos, comic music-press ads ("You've been warned! Elton John is 1968's great new talent") and other ample proof of his time, with... Rating: 4 Stars
Nelly - Brass Knuckles
Artist: Nelly Review: Combining Will Smith's friendliness with St. Louis slang and a down-home drawl, Nelly has mastered his own brand of crossover appeal. On his fifth album, he mostly sticks to that pop-rap formula, cranking his distinctly melodic flow to hyper-speeds and playing the good-natured hedonist on cuts like "Party People." But when he tries to come off hard on a handful of Dirty South brawlers, he ends up sounding generic: "U Ain't Him" finds him rhyming about gunplay and warning no one in particular abo... Rating: 3 Stars
Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
Artist: Ne-Yo Review: There's a difference between a ladies' man and a man who loves women, and Ne-Yo reps for the latter. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter says his latest collection of heartfelt love songs is a tribute to the Rat Pack's pressed-suit style, but it's actually a superb concept album about what a great boyfriend he can be — call it Songs in the Key of Nice. Having already penned lady-power hits for Beyoncé and Rihanna, he's the Gloria Steinem of R&B on "Miss Independent": "She move like a... Rating: 4 Stars
Metallica - Death Magnetic
Artist: Metallica Review: In the eighties, thrash metal wasn't a scene, it was an arms race: riffs kept speeding up, drum kits got bigger. But with 1991's Black Album, Metallica opted for unilateral disarmament, slowing their tempos, shortening their songs and smelting their chugging guitars and piston-powered drums into armor-plated pop hooks. After that, the band rushed from one reinvention to another, starting with the Southern-rock infusion of 1996's Load and culminating in the muddled, bizarrely produced group-ther... Rating: 4 Stars
Joan Baez - Day After Tomorrow
Artist: Joan Baez Review: "I believe in prophecy," Baez sings on her new album. For five decades, her ringing soprano has been a prophetic sound, summoning the earnestness and anger — and, a bit too often, the self-righteousness — of the folk revival that made her its poster child. For her 24th studio release, Baez has teamed up with Steve Earle, who produced the album and contributed three songs. It's a fruitful partnership: Earle's hard-won earthiness acts as a counterweight to Baez's ethereal tendencies,... Rating: 3 Stars
Tricky - Knowle West Boy
Artist: Tricky Review: 2008 is shaping up as the Year Bristol Bounced Back. Earlier this year, the city's trip-hop lords Portishead released the superb album Third. Now comes the first record in five years from Tricky, who helped codify the foreboding Bristol sound along with Portishead and Massive Attack in the mid-Nineties. Tricky's hometown is much on his mind: The album title refers to the hardscrabble hood where he grew up, and he has called the album a homage to the Brit pop of his youth. You can hear the... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Okkervil River - The Stand Ins
Artist: Okkervil River Review: On this album-length sequel to last year's The Stage Names, these Austin indie rockers continue to dissect the looking-glass emptiness of life spent on the stage, as well as in the cheap seats. "Fuck long hours, sick with singing," frontman Will Sheff sings over slow-building, mariachi-style blues on "Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979," a boozy, post-fame portrait of the late gay glam rocker Jobraith. Like its predecessor, The Stand Ins also... Rating: 3 Stars
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
Artist: Lindsey Buckingham Review: On this album's opener, "Great Day," there's an electric-guitar solo so blowtorch-hot, it seems specifically designed to bitch-slap anyone with the nerve to wonder if Lindsey Buckingham still rocks. Buckingham's 2006 comeback, Under the Skin, was largely a reflective, parlor-room affair, full of self-doubt and dazzling acoustic playing, and here, the mood is still darkly introspective: "Suicide days, suicide, suicide nights/In the wheelchair almost blind," he sings on "Wait for You." But the... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Kimya Dawson - Alphabutt
Artist: Kimya Dawson Review: Solo and as half of Moldy Peaches, Dawson has applied child-like wisdom and humor to adult issues like crack, romantic love, and the Iraq war. So it makes peculiar sense that she'd follow the freak success of the Juno soundtrack, which featured her on seven tracks, with a set of genuine kids songs. (She also recently became a mom.) But by the time she's halfway through the scatological title track — "C is for cat butt, D is for doo-doo" — it's clear this ain't Nickelodeon. Some songs... Rating: 3 Stars
Lou Reed - Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse
Artist: Lou Reed Review: Upon the 1973 release of Berlin, a Rolling Stone critic deemed the record "patently offensive." Thirty years later, Lou Reed's concept album about speed freaks on a downward spiral of infidelity, spousal abuse, parental neglect and death ranked 344 on this magazine's 500 all-time-greatest-albums list. Reed has always fed upon this kind of irony, and in 2006 he staged a concert adaptation of his rock musical in Brooklyn. (Painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel shot the performances.) Where Reed once... Rating: 4 Stars
Fela Kuti - Logos Baby
Artist: Fela Kuti Review: This set shows Afrobeat's chieftain before he became the most musically and politically radical musician in African history. Disc One, recorded shortly after Fela's college years in London, collects jazzy, percolating dance tunes that split the difference between Nigerian high-life lilt and the hotter sound of London calypso. The brassy ballroom jam "Bonfu (Short Skirt)," featuring Fela's early band Koola Lobitos, shows he was a skirt-chaser long before he married 27 women simultaneously. "Amaec... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Roy Orbison - The Soul of Rock & Roll
Artist: Roy Orbison Review: Roy Orbison was a superhero of song. Unassuming in appearance, he became someone extraordinary when his weeping tenor took flight, rising from deep, dark places on anguished ballads like "Only the Lonely" and "Crying." Orbison rebuilt the stark balladry of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" as a jukebox opera house, expanded rock's arrangement limitations, and opened a door to Phil Spector and Freddie Mercury alike. This 107-track box captures Orbison's Fifties rockabilly beginnings on its first... Rating: 5 Stars
James Taylor - Covors
Artist: James Taylor Review: On hits like "Handy Man," "Up on the Roof" and "How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You)," James Taylor's way of interpreting other songwriters' hits has been to turn them into James Taylor songs. His honeyed drawl is supple enough to accommodate R&B and country standards, sweetening the savory tang of their rural sources. That approach guides Covers, where Taylor assays the likes of the Drifters' "On Broadway," Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." He softens the arrangements... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tounge
Artist: Jenny Lewis Review: This Rilo Kiley frontwoman is everything a mother could want in a daughter: She's bright, talented — and ready to slice 'n' dice anyone who's done Mom wrong. "In your honor, I'm going to cut that man in half," she wails in "Jack Killed Mom," an enigmatic domestic fable that segues from chugging rock to a revival-tent rave-up. Lewis is indie rock's most sharp-elbowed songwriter, a crafter of taut meditations on love, sex and politics that are full of violent emotions and, occasionally, plai... Rating: 4 Stars
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival Review: Hailing from El Cerrito, California, Creedence Clearwater Revival should've logically been another hippie collective waving flowers in neighboring San Francisco. As these 40th-anniversary editions suggest, leader John Fogerty instead invented an alternate identity for his band based on its otherwise unremarkable 1968 debut album's rumbling reinvention of a rock oldie. His singing voice swollen with the exaggerated vowels and slurred consonants of shouting Southern bluesmen, Fogerty discovered... Rating: 4 Stars
Fela Kuti - Lagos Baby: 1963-1969
Artist: Fela Kuti Review: This set shows Afrobeat's chieftain before he became the most musically and politically radical musician in African history. Disc One, recorded shortly after Fela's college years in London, collects jazzy, percolating dance tunes that split the difference between Nigerian high-life lilt and the hotter sound of London calypso. The brassy ballroom jam "Bonfu (Short Skirt)," featuring Fela's early band Koola Lobitos, shows he was a skirt-chaser long before he married 27 women simultaneously. "Amaec... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Roy Orbison - The Soul of Rock and Roll
Artist: Roy Orbison Review: Roy Orbison was a superhero of song. Unassuming in appearance, he became someone extraordinary when his weeping tenor took flight, rising from deep, dark places on anguished ballads like "Only the Lonely" and "Crying." Orbison rebuilt the stark balladry of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" as a jukebox opera house, expanded rock's arrangement limitations, and opened a door to Phil Spector and Freddie Mercury alike. This 107-track box captures Orbison's Fifties rockabilly beginnings on its first... Rating: 5 Stars
James Taylor - Covers
Artist: James Taylor Review: On hits like "Handy Man," "Up on the Roof" and "How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You)," James Taylor's way of interpreting other songwriters' hits has been to turn them into James Taylor songs. His honeyed drawl is supple enough to accommodate R&B and country standards, sweetening the savory tang of their rural sources. That approach guides Covers, where Taylor assays the likes of the Drifters' "On Broadway," Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." He softens the arrangements... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmos Factory
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival Review: Hailing from El Cerrito, California, Creedence Clearwater Revival should've logically been another hippie collective waving flowers in neighboring San Francisco. As these 40th-anniversary editions suggest, leader John Fogerty instead invented an alternate identity for his band based on its otherwise unremarkable 1968 debut album's rumbling reinvention of a rock oldie. His singing voice swollen with the exaggerated vowels and slurred consonants of shouting Southern bluesmen, Fogerty discovered... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Otis Redding - Live in London & Paris
Artist: Otis Redding Review: Otis Redding didn't simply "play concerts." The soul giant was a human Mount Vesuvius: He erupted. Redding was at the height of his fame in March 1967, when he played these two brief shows in London and Paris. (He would die in a plane crash in December that year.) And the audience's reaction is ecstatic — it's a fair bet that few of these Europeans had ever witnessed a spectacle quite like Redding and the all-star Stax house band, Booker T. and the MG's and the Mar-Key horns, tearing into... Rating: 4 Stars
T.I. - Paper Trail
Artist: T.I. Review: "Facing all kinda time/But smile like I'm fine," T.I. crows on "No Matter What." The Atlanta rapper recorded his sixth album while under house arrest for weapons possessions charges, and he faces a year-long prison sentence beginning in 2009. But as the plodding "existential" concept album T.I. vs. T.I.P. (2007) showed, he is a far better braggart than brooder — smiling like he's fine is good for business. On Paper Trail, T.I. mostly dispenses with the Tupac-wannabe gangsta-confessor... Rating: 3 Stars
Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition
Artist: Johnny Cash Review: After years of dwindling sales, Johnny Cash walked into California's Folsom Prison on January 13th, 1968, and reinvigorated his career: At Folsom Prison, the live album he cut that day, went platinum and shored up Cash's outlaw image with jailbird anthems that vividly evoked prison life with a country-folk sound that became roughly as enduring as the Bible. This two-CD, one-DVD reissue includes the set that followed the original recording, plus songs from openers Carl Perkins and the Statler... Rating: 4 Stars
The Clash - Live at Shea Stadium
Artist: The Clash Review: In late 1982, the greatest punk band of all time was in the midst of a swift, sad decline: Though the Clash had just released their most commercially successful album, Combat Rock, they had also just booted longtime drummer and then-smack addict Topper Headon — a move that, according to late, great frontman Joe Strummer, sent the band "limping to its death." The f0llowing year would see the departure of singer-guitarist Mick Jones, and the classic Clash lineup would never cut another... Rating: 4 Stars
Old Crow Medicine Show - Tennessee Pusher
Artist: Old Crow Medicine Show Review: Old Crow Medicine Show aren't revivalists. They're anachronists. On their fourth full-length, produced by Don Was, the Nashville quartet mash up a well-nigh 19th-century sound — hopped-up folk, bluegrass, country and gospel — with lyrics that are firmly planted in the 21st century. "Huff paint, cocaine, playing chicken with a train/Smack dab, meth lab, mellow out, rehab," hoots Ketch Secor in "Alabama High-Test." Several songs cast a journalistic eye on hard partying, from the countr... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
Artist: Lucinda Williams Review: "Is your death wish stronger than you are?" Lucinda Williams asks in "Little Rock Star," a cautionary song swathed in guitar noise that someone should instant-message to Pete Doherty, Ryan Adams and Amy Winehouse. While it shows that the 55-year-old barbed-wire country singer is wary of rock's trappings, Little Honey proves she's still crushed out on the music. On "Real Love," amid boogie-rock riffing, she alternately pledges her heart to a guy, a girl and an electric guitar. And "Honey Bee"... Rating: 4 Stars
Graham Nash - Songs For Beginners
Artist: Graham Nash Review: "How do you write about breaking up with Joni Mitchell?" asks Graham Nash in the liner notes to his first solo album. Good question. His 1970 split with the willowy Canadian singer-songwriter was the seed of this modest 33-minute solo debut, which proves the cliché that unfortunate events can generate excellent art. The stripped-down piano ballads "Better Days" and "Simple Man" ("I just want to hold you/I don't want to hold you down") and the majestic "I Used to Be a King," spangled with Jerry... Rating: 3.5 Stars
The Replacements - Tim
Artist: The Replacements Review: Released in 1985, Tim caught a great American garage band stretching out, working Big Star pop and Fifties-style rock into a mix of punky abandon and regular-dude romanticism. This version — reissued along with three other 'Mats albums, none of which is quite as tuneful as Tim — brightens the sound and adds six bonus cuts, including a bare-bones version of "Here Comes a Regular," Paul Westerberg's moving acoustic ballad about directionless barflies. Rarely did Westerberg write so... Rating: 4 Stars
Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall
Artist: Buena Vista Social Club Review: In 1998, the aging members of this Cuban collective realized a lifelong dream: playing to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall. That show, captured on this two-disc set, is even more emotionally engaging than the group's eponymous album, which triggered a worldwide Latin-jazz revival. Highlights include a fiery vocal workout on "El Cuarto de Tula"; the intoxicating folk of "Orgullecida," featuring Ry Cooder's Hawaiian-style slide guitar; the wistful bolero "Dos Gardenias," sung with delicate nua... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Jolie Holland - The Living and The Dead
Artist: Jolie Holland Review: Yes, Jolie Holland knows Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues. Over the mariachi horns of "Mexico City," the Texas singer introduces Jack, who drinks too much because "there was nowhere else to go." That apocalyptic feeling pervades this sepia-toned album, boosted by M. Ward's scraggly hooks. Holland has a soft spot for sad sacks — the "ghost-faced junkie" of "Corrido por Buddy," the lover who made her "little heart a graveyard" on "Palmyra" — but her honeyed harmonies keep the mood from... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Juana Molina - Un Dia
Artist: Juana Molina Review: Imagine if Tina Fey quit comedy and sang electronics-based folk songs. That's the path Juana Molina took more than 10 years ago in her native Argentina, leaving her job as a TV comedian to pursue experimental folk. Her fifth disc is her most adventurous, combining avant-garde vocals with the atmospherics of Portishead and My Bloody Valentine. With looped guitar, hypnotic percussion and a bit of feedback, the title track sounds like two songs playing at once. The centerpiece is a trio that includ... Rating: 4 Stars
Ingrid Michaelson - Be Ok
Artist: Ingrid Michaelson Review: Last year, Staten Island acoustic singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson warmed hearts (and shoulders) with "The Way I Am," a cutesy pop ballad where she promised her man, "If you are chilly, here, take my sweater." (The song was picked up for an Old Navy ad.) On Be OK, Michaelson's still generous: "You and I" finds her offering to buy pals dance lessons, her parents a home in France and "everybody nice sweaters" (again?!). And she's still a yawn: While the title track is a bright, finger-snapping... Rating: 2 Stars
De La Soul
Niedawno świętowali dwudziestolecie działalności muzycznej. Mają na koncie siedem świetnych albumów studyjnych, ogromny komercyjny sukces oraz status żywej legendy....
Biffy Clyro, Singles 2001-5
Looking back with tracks like these is a hugely enjoyable process.
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
Badu is back and still balancing the retro/progressive contradiction better than anyone.
The Sugars, The Curse Of The Sugars
The Leeds trio prove themselves well worthy of the buzz that's been surrounding them.
Jazzie B, Presents School Days: Life Changing Tracks From The Trojan Archive
The charm of this compilation comes from its rosy glow of musical nostalgia.
School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Artist: School Of Seven Bells Review: This New York trio of ex-Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis and twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza is the sum of hip contradictions: om-drone modernism coated with the Dehezas' antique vocal blur of Gentle Giant's prog-choir counterpoint and the harmonies of a medieval Shangri-Las. The effect is warm goth — New Order with more eros. "Chain" veers close to electro-candy Madonna, but the Neu-like zoom and robot-nun chanting in "Sempiternal/Amaranth" are more beguiling, like an evening... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
Artist: Elton John Review: Elton John was a lot of things — sideman, session man and flop, with a long tail of failed solo releases, including the 1969 LP Empty Sky — before 1970's Elton John made him an overnight star. He wasn't afraid to admit it. John packed a bonus scrapbook in the original lavish packaging of 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy with bad-hair photos, comic music-press ads ("You've been warned! Elton John is 1968's great new talent") and other ample proof of his time, with... Rating: 4.5 Stars
The Zutons, You Can Do Anything
The Zutons are, you'll be relieved to know, on fine form.
Seal - Soul
Artist: Seal Review: Amy Winehouse, what hath thou wrought? In the wake of the Great Beehived One's world-beating success, it seems everyone is getting in touch with his or her retro-soul muse. The latest bandwagon-jumper is Seal — who, with megaproducer David Foster playing the part of Mark Ronson, has delivered a collection of classic-soul covers, dripping with melodrama and tricked out with swooping symphonic orchestration. Seal is a fine singer, whose flavorful tenor combines the smoothness of old-school... Rating: 2.5 Stars
T.Love
Grupa nagrywała swój debiutancki album w najlepszym wówczas studiu w Polsce - S4 w Warszawie przy ulicy Woronicza. Nie obyło się bez spięć, bowiem producentem materiału był Jerzy Regulski, pracujący wcześniej z Perfectem i Bajmem....
Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
Artist: Ne-Yo Review: There's a difference between a ladies' man and a man who loves women, and Ne-Yo reps for the latter. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter says his latest collection of heartfelt love songs is a tribute to the Rat Pack's pressed-suit style, but it's actually a superb concept album about what a great boyfriend he can be — call it Songs in the Key of Nice. Having already penned lady-power hits for Beyoncé and Rihanna, he's the Gloria Steinem of R&B on "Miss Independent": "She move like a... Rating: 4 Stars
Destroyer - Trouble In Dreams
Artist: Destroyer Review: Like Neko Case, his bandmate in the New Pornographers, Destroyer's Dan Bejar has a solo career that's gone from sideshow to headliner. His latest seals the deal. Bejar's affection for early-Seventies glam — especially T. Rex and Bowie, when proto-punk canoodled with prog-rock fantasy flights — remains deep. But he's filtered his cribbing through an indie rocker's sense of humor and a poet's love of language. "Caution — hot ashes?/ The girl says to her first kiss," he... Rating: 4 Stars
Woods
Czy w 2005 r. jest jeszcze ktoś, kto wydaje album na kasecie?...
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Motley Crue - Saints Of Los Angeles
Artist: Motley Crue Review: All the filth and fury of their Eighties heyday, finally funneled into an album Mötley Cüe have created a cottage industry out of rehashing their excesses: Their tales of debauchery have already fueled dozens of books and a standard-bearing episode of Behind the Music. Now they've woven those stories into their first album in eight years. Inspired by their 2001 sleazeography, The Dirt, Saints of Los Angeles finds Vince Neil flashing back to the band's golden age: gigging on the... Rating: 3 Stars
Anya Marina - Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II
Artist: Anya Marina Review: Anya Marina's childlike voice doesn't jibe with her randy album title. But that doesn't stop the San Diego singer from growling come-ons on "Afterparty at Jimmy's" ("You got soul onstage, boy/How about soul in the sack?") or purring like Jessica Rabbit on the cabaret-style "All the Same to Me." She dials it back on "Vertigo," a sweet ode to a dizzying dude. With blippy drum loops, it sounds like a play date with a Casio — proof that Marina still has G-rated fun. Rating: 3 Stars
Cilmi Gabriella
Do tej pory artystki z Australii stanowiły wyraźną mniejszość na scenie muzycznej. Były czymś w rodzaju ciekawostek. Czy teraz coś się zmieni?...
Pavement - Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition
Artist: Pavement Review: In 1997, these slacker romantics slowed things down and serenaded their fans, delivering an album short on noise and long on artfully dissonant ballads. Stephen Malkmus worked softy sentimentality even into his funniest lines, rhyming "quasar in the mist" with "kaiser has a cyst" ("Stereo"). With a second disc of bonus material — including classic B sides like the insanely catchy "Harness Your Hopes" and welcome ditties like "Destroy Mater Dei" — this reissue bonanza shows the Nineti... Rating: 4.5 Stars
L.Stadt
Łódzki kwartet powstały w Strasburgu z połączenia pasji z solidnym wykształceniem muzycznym, kultywujący wymierającą tradycję wydawania EP-ek i posiadający w swoim składzie dwóch perkusistów. Nic dziwnego, że nazywany jest nadzieją polskiej muzyki. ...
Paul Weller, 22 Dreams
In one fell swoop he's thrown off his dour image, ushering in a host of new fans by delivering the best solo album of his career.